With the development of terminal technology, terminals equipped with touchscreen as a basic input method are widely used as they are small and can be conveniently carried. Currently tablet personal computers (also referred to as tablet PC, flat PC, tablet, slate) and touchscreen cell phones promoted by various terminal manufacturers are typical terminals that use the touchscreen as the basic input method.
The touchscreen on the tablet is also referred to as a digital panel. A user does not need to use a traditional mouse and keyboard as an input device. Instead, the user can user his/her finger to directly operate the touchscreen. A purpose of inputting information to the table is achieved through a handwriting recognition software installed at the tablet or a soft keyboard displayed on the touchscreen.
Typical information inputting processes involve the tablet receiving information that the user inputs through a form displayed at the touchscreen. The form is an input page that is responsible for collecting data. The form has three basic components, i.e., a form tab, a form field, and a form button.
The form tab may include a URL of a CGI program that processes information collected by the form and a method that submits the information collected by the form to a server.
The form field may include at least one input box. The input box for data may be a text box, a password box, a hidden field, a multiple-line text box, a multiple-choice box, a single-choice box, a drop-down box, a file upload box, etc., to input collected information.
The form button may include a submission button, a reset button, and a general button to transmit the information collected by the form to a CGI script at the server or cancel the input. The form button may also be used to control other processing tasks that are defined by processing scripts.
FIG. 1 illustrates a form 102 and a soft keyboard 104 displayed at a touchscreen 106 of a tablet. A traditional form processing method is to use a cursor location method. A cursor 108 is used to locate an input box 110 that a user currently inputs information. The tablet receives the information that the user inputs through clicking the soft keyboard 104 at the touchscreen 106 into the input box 110 that is located by the cursor 108.
The cursor location method includes the following operations. After the user clicks and triggers the touchscreen, it is determined whether a position that the user clicks is the input box location of the form. If a determination result is positive, the cursor is moved to the information inputting position of the input box that the user clicks. The user clicks the soft keyboard at the touchscreen to input information into the input box located by the current cursor. The touchscreen is also ready to receive the information input by the user into the input box that the cursor locates.
In the example of the form 102 and the soft keyboard 104 in FIG. 1, after the touchscreen 106 detects that the user clicks a first line of the input box 110, the cursor 108 is moved to an information inputting position of the first line of the input box 110. The touchscreen 106 receives information input by the user, through clicking the soft keyboard 104, at the first line of the input box 110. After the information at the first line of the input box 110 completes inputting, the touchscreen 106 continues to detect whether the user clicks any other position of the input box 110. Assuming that the user clicks a second line of the input box 110, the touchscreen moves the cursor 108 to a position of the input box 110 that the user currently clicks, as shown in FIG. 2, to continue to receive information that the user inputs through the soft keyboard 104.
In the above form processing method based on the cursor location, the touchscreen needs to determine whether the user intends to input information into the input box in real time and which input box is triggered by the user's click. If a determination result is positive, the cursor is continuously moved to determine the input box that the user currently inputs the information. Thus, a large amount of processes are assigned to the touchscreen to implement the above input operations based on the cursor location, thereby occupying too many terminal resources and wasting terminal resources.